


here's the thing:

by thenameiwantedwastaken



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Endgame, Pre-Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Super Soldier Serum, serum headcanons, they made steve old and that's fine but i won't stand for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 23:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19328752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenameiwantedwastaken/pseuds/thenameiwantedwastaken
Summary: After Sam has taken up the shield and the title, all that’s left on the lakeside are two old soldiers.





	here's the thing:

After Sam has taken up the shield and the title, all that’s left on the lakeside are two old soldiers.

Bucky’s approach is slow and careful. He stands where Sam did, with the same view of the same old man. Where Sam was calm, comfortable, Bucky is wary. Steve doesn’t look up, content to smile out over the water. It’s on Bucky to break this silence.

“Just how much living did you _do_?"

* * *

 

Here’s the thing about the serum:

Surviving the serum is like waking up, and like knowing you’ll never be awake again.

Bucky won’t tell, and Nat can’t tell, so the only person capable of revealing the truth is sitting on a bench and smiling out over the water, looking far, far older than he has any business to.

 

(and here’s the thing about Nat’s death, that only Clint knows, that burned itself into his mind’s eye and that he’ll never, ever give voice to:

When Nat was looking up at him, eyes gentle _(“It’s okay.”)_ she looked so much younger than he’d ever seen her. So much younger than when they’d met, a lifetime and a universe ago.

In these final moments, they were the same age, but there he was; an old man, bitter, tired, and clinging onto a girl, eternally 20 in Budapest.)

* * *

 

“I lost track of time,” Steve admits, finally. “I went to watch the Grand Canyon, sometimes, if I needed a breather. Watched it form.”

Bucky wants to believe that Steve has found a fondness for poetry in his old age, that he’s speaking in vague metaphors.

He knows, though.

He knows Steve, and he knows the serum.

Steve watched the Grand Canyon form.

* * *

 

Here’s the thing Bucky wouldn’t admit to, but Nat knew, Steve knows:

He didn’t spend nearly as much time under the ice as everyone else thinks he did.

* * *

 

Bucky takes a seat beside Steve on the bench, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward. The lake is pretty enough, but the tranquil scene does nothing to ease the churning in his gut.

“Can we even die?” Bucky asks.

“Nat did,” Steve says, and it’s not a yes or a no: it’s a _maybe_ , it’s a _not really_ , it’s a _not without help_. “Do you want to?”

Bucky shrugs. Doesn’t answer right away, thinks on it before he says, “just kind of tricky figuring out a future when the timeframe is eternity.”

“I can help with that,” Steve offers. His face, wrinkled and grey with time, with age, is a far cry from the features Bucky is used to, but those eyes are the same; bright, earnest, and the one thing Bucky can never say no to.

“I’m not who I was before the war,” Bucky protests. “I might not be someone you want to figure out a future with.”

Steve smiles at Bucky, then, a little wider on the left than the right. His face is old but he’s still so young as he says, with absolute certainty, “yeah, but you’re not that different, either.”

* * *

 

Here’s the thing about Bucky and Steve:

They will rearrange the world, the universe, even time itself, just to get back to each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> i have some THOUGHTS about that serum business, son
> 
> i haven't done this since, like, 2008. send help and blankets


End file.
